The physical location of a device that is connected to a network can be an important piece of information. For example, in the hospital context, monitors are used to track the vital statistics of patients. The location of these patient monitors can be important, particularly when the patient monitors are connected to a central monitoring system that is remotely located from the monitors. When a patient monitor provides signals to the central monitoring system indicating that a patient needs attention, it is important that the caregiver can readily identify the location of the patent monitor and associated patient so that the caregiver can provide assistance.
In today's computing environment, many networks are Ethernet-based and support simultaneous sessions to multiple endpoints over such protocols as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP). In such networks, there is no easy way to identify the physical location of a patient monitor in the network. Such systems either require monitors that are fixed within a given room, or require the caregiver to always update location information when the patient monitor is moved to a new location. Such scenarios can lead to an inflexible deployment of monitors and/or human error.